$48bn a year would provide electricity
to the poor, report says

Giving the poor access to electricity
would bring huge gains in health, education and economic
growth, with little increase in emmissions, according
to International Energy Agency study

Fiona Harvey - guardian.co.uk

A woman holds an oil lamp as her
children study in their house in Nada, a village near the south-west
Indian port of Mangalore. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP

More than 1 billion people in poor countries around
the world could have access to electricity within 20 years, if the international
community is prepared to make the effort, the International Energy Agency
(IEA) said on Monday.

Giving poor people access to electricity – more than a century
after it became available to the rich – would cost about $48bn
a year, and would have huge advantages in terms of health, education
and economic growth, a global
study for the IEA concluded. Moreover,
it would not require a leap in greenhouse gas emissions, as low-carbon
energy could make up a large part of the new energy sources to bring
the poor into step with the modern world.

If done properly, providing electricity access to those who lack it
would increase carbon dioxide emissions by about 0.7%, according to
the IEA report, which it said would be "equivalent to the annual
emissions of New York State but giving electricity to a population
more than 50 times the size".

"Eradicating energy poverty is a moral imperative, and this report
shows that it is achievable. Now it is just a question of mustering
the political will," said Maria van der Hoeven, executive director
of the IEA. "In too many countries today, children cannot do their
homework because they have no light. Food cannot be kept because there
is no electricity. In short, modern society cannot function. The United
Nations has declared 2012 the International Year of Sustainable Energy
for All, and this is an excellent opportunity for us to agree on rapid
collective action to address this unacceptable problem."

People with access to electricity suffer far less from indoor air
pollution, mostly caused by cooking over traditional wood fires. Close
to 3 billion people around the world currently have no access to clean
cooking facilities, and indoor air pollution is one of the world's
biggest "silent killers", causing millions of deaths and
many more cases of respiratory illness every year, mostly in women
and children, who are more exposed to the pollution.

Education is also improved with electricity access, as children are
able to study at home after school, rather than having to rely on kerosene
lamps or candles.

Although the $48bn a year is a massive hike from current levels of
investment, Van der Hoeven pointed out it would be only about 3% of
the worldwide investment needed in the electricity sector, in order
to update services and to move to low-carbon electricity provision.

The IEA calculates that of the money needed, $18bn could come from
multilateral and bilateral development sources, $15bn from the governments
of developing countries and $15bn from the private sector.

Most of the people currently lacking modern energy facilities are
in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, the IEA report found.

The IEA study forms part of its annual "world energy outlook" report,
its respected and eagerly awaited update on the world's energy scene,
encompassing climate change, energy access and forecasts of pressures
on the oil price. This year's report will also include information
on shale gas, following the IEA's summer publication of a report dismantling
some of the claims from the fossil fuel industry that the world is
entering a "golden age of gas".